For special business reports and catalog printing campaigns, graphic elements illustrate specific data values muchfaster. The trouble is, most of the graphs you see in desktop publishingapplications look too common, too flat, and well, boring.

Luckilyfor you, it is actually easy to create your own styled vector graphsusing Adobe Illustrator. The steps are pretty easy. So anyone with somebasic knowledge of how design software works should be able to easilyhandle it. Here are the steps that you need to follow to create simplevector graphs.

1. With an open document, select the Pie graph tool.

2.Now, click on the canvass where approximately you want the centre ofyour pie graph to appear. Enter the appropriate values for the size ofyour pie graph.

3.Afterward, you will see a table. Since pie graphs are representationsof a whole, then you will want to enter values here that sum up to 100%.For our example, we are using 60, 30 and 10.

4. Once done, click on the checkbox. You will see then the graph rendered with the values that you entered.

5.Next, we break the graph into parts. First close the data table by justclicking on its “X” icon. As it is now, the graph is a whole. So wewill need to ungroup it. First select the selection tool (Hotkey V) andthen click on our pie graph. Afterwards, select Object -> Ungroup.

6. A window will ask you for confirmation, just press YES.

7. Let us then add some colours to the parts of the graph. Simply select each element and add a colour.

8.Now, separate your pie elements a bit to add some space. This is nowactually a simple 2D vector Pie Graph. However, to make things moreinteresting, we will make it a 3D type graph.

9. Do this by selecting one part of the pie and clicking Effect -> 3D -? Extrude and Bevel

10.Once the controls are open, select custom rotation. Now, you can setyour own rotation by dragging your mouse across the example cube.However, to make things faster, just enter these values.

X Axis: 40 degrees

Y Axis: 15 degrees

Z Axis: 10 degrees

Extrude depth: 50

Bevel: None

Surface: Plastic

11. Afterwards, you will see a nice 3D pie area.

12. Now, just repeat the process for the other two. You will see the 3D pie graph is complete!

13. Now just style the surfaces. Use Colour gradients if possible to make things look even more interesting.

14.Finally, just add some numbers to make things look credible. Make surethat you pay close attention to the position of your pie graph chunks.You can actually make it appear that one chunk is lifted over anotherfor emphasis.

Great! Now you know how to create vector pie graphs in Adobe Illustrator.

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